EDITOR’S NOTE:
This issue of LapTopping was deemed so crucial to your personal development it was sent twice. We sincerely apologise for the congestion. It came to our attention that it contained a lot of potentially rude words, and was being confiscated by robonuns. This explains the frenetic use of friendly asterixis.

VLADIMIR VOTE-VOTE AND THE VOTEWORTHY VOTEMONSTER VOTEKINS ON THE VOTE-TRAIN TO VOTESYLVANIA ON A VOTEY DAY IN VOTETEMBER.
(How we can all stand on each other’s shoulders and hide in a massive trench coat and sneak The Bedroom Philosopher into Triple J’s 2006 Hottest 100)

Step 1 – Take a deep breath and remind yourself that you are a charming plasma dragon of star-curating goodness.

Step 2 – Watch ‘The Little Rascals’ a movie about cheeky kids from 1994 starring a character called ‘Alfalfa’ to get an idea of the previous trench coat metaphor. (optional)

Step 4 – This year, you are encouraged to create a short-list of your favourite 10 songs from the year. (Make it a self-empowerment exercise – ‘my opinions are important!) All instructions are on the page.

Step 5 – You have to go back into your email account and click on a ‘confirmation’ thing.

Step 8 – Sit back and allow ‘Princess Fonta’ the official LapTopping Air-borne Mermaid of Interpretive Breakdance to fly out of the screen and butterfly peck you comedically on the forehead. Thankyou.

NOTE: Last year – we got to #180 after two months of air-play. This year the odds are spunky of sneaking in. If so – there will be a cruskit and rum and table tennis party somewhere awesome.
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TOP 9 BEST FAMILY CHRISTMAS MOMENTS 2005

1 – Nan saying to me ‘Justin, you’re a socialite now, can you recommend a champagne for Christmas?’

2 – Pop taking a sip of champagne at 8am, during our traditional ham, pineapple and champagne breakfast and saying ‘that’s a bit sharp this time of the morning’ which I think he has said every Christmas for the last ten years.

3 – Nan’s reaction to my Christmas present. Realising that nearly every year for the last twenty years Nan has said something along the lines of ‘just get me something for the garden,’ and I never have, this year, I did. After opening the present (for the first time, abandoning her ‘let’s save this paper for next year’ sticky tape caution) Nan realises I am holding the camera, and poses, by holding the bottle of rose spray and punnet of rose food in the air, smiling and saying ‘Am I happy?’ about four times. After I took the photo she said ‘and you didn’t get that for fifty cents.’ It makes me giggle, to imagine if I had somehow got in touch with the rapper 50 Cent and bought him rose food.

4 – Mum’s reaction to my Christmas present. Utilising the income from an actual job I got her my most expensive present ever by about $60. It was a two hour massage/pedicure/facial package. The best part was she didn’t enquire about or worry about how much I’d spent, which was my main concern.

5 – Pop’s reaction to my Christmas present. I bought him a small flagon of Swan Rum. At first he thought it might have been some kind of body wash, to which Nan said ‘No Father, you can’t wash your body with that.’

6 – Nan buying pop a new electric razor and then trying to fake him out:
Pop: Oh, a new razor!
Nan: No, that’s just the box we’ve used, sorry father.

7 – Uncle Ken taking over from my role as Santa for the first time in my life.
Ken: (handing Nan a gift) To Nan from Pop.
Nan: Feels heavy pop, what’d ya get? A bag of spuds?
Laughter.
Pop: I’ll be truthful I didn’t buy it.
Nan: Oh, you don’t have to tell everyone you won’t go out shopping. I don’t tell ‘em.

8 – Ken reading out some ‘words of wisdom,’ found in his Christmas Bon-bon.
Ken: You can be whatever type of person you choose to be. Your habits. Your behaviours. Your response, are all your choices.
(Laughter from Justin and Ken)
Justin: We choose everything we are.
Ken: Slightly true, but not quite…it needs to be not as succinct…or…

7 – Casually reading ‘The Game’ by Neil Strauss on our swing seat.
Mum: (Coming out to see what I’m doing) What are you reading?
Justin: It’s a book about professional pick-up artists in America.
Mum: Oh, I see.
(She picks up a hose)

8 – Making everyone in my family mix CD’s for Christmas. Pop got ‘Pop’s pop hits’ including The Shins and Johnny Cash. Nan got ‘Music to do housework by’ including White Stripes, Daft Punk and Radiohead’s ‘National Anthem’ of course! For Mum, I approached her with a notebook and pen and asked her what her favourite Dylan, Stones, Kinks and Beatles songs were. Later on, she recounted how delighted she was by the entire process. I noted that it was like being a waiter at a musical café.

9 – Ken reading out his bon-bon joke:
Ken: How do you catch a squirrel? The answer is climb up a tree and act like a nut.
Laughter from Nan.
Nan: (laughing) Yeah, be the best way to catch a nut.
Justin: Or, how do you catch a squirrel? ‘By his nuts’ would be a much better answer.
Big laughter from Nan and Ken.
Nan: It’s just as well that you didn’t look at the end of the table here young man.
Justin: (mumbles something about being a comedy writer)
Ken: That’s why we need people like you.
Nan: It’s just as well you didn’t look at the end of the table when you said that.
Mum: I was busy…(something)
Ken: That’s why we need innovative comedy.
Nan: She looked up and gave you such a look.
Justin: Oh, y’know.
(Nan laughs)
Justin: Sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit rude to get a laugh.
Mum: I’ve heard worse than that before I can assure you.
Justin: Yeah, so have I. (half-said) Which…(trails off into nervous laugh)
Nan: (referring to the Ronnie Johns show) Did you bring the video with you?
Justin: Yeah.
Mum: We haven’t seen it yet. Oh, tonight we’ll have a look at it.
Justin: (laughing, mumbling) I’m avoiding putting it on.
Nan: Is it a Christmas night one? (laughs)
Ken: (quietly) I think it’s alright.
Pop: There’s that devil one…(referring to a video about Tasmanian Devils that Nan got from the library)
Ken: Compared to the devil one it’s a bit…
(Laughter)
Justin: A bit jokey.
Pop: And the backpack one. (referring to a Tasmanian backpacking video Nan got from the library)
Nan: Yes we’ve got to see that before Justin goes.
Ken: We’ll have to show them though Justin.
Justin: Well we’ll just put an episode on, I’ll run away and come back and say look I didn’t write half of it, don’t hold it against me.
Ken: Yeah I wish I had that one, I missed that one that you wrote a lot of…and I’m a bit upset.
Mum: Oh…
Justin: I’ll find episode two…
Ken: I had to go out and work.
Justin: Episode two’s got parmajana’s in it
Ken: Yeah.
Mum clears away pudding bowls.
Justin: I’ll try and find that.
Ken: There’s, there’s quite a few…
Justin: If you can handle a bit…a…chop, y’know chopper, Mark ‘Chopper’ Reid?
Nan: Mark ‘Chopper’ Reid.
Justin: He’s a character
Ken: You do know that. If you know that, that’s the…
Justin: There’s a guy playing him, and he swears a lot. He’s very funny. They make him do things he wouldn’t normally do like call bingo, read the weather…
Ken: And he’s f’ing this…
Justin: And he swears a lot.
Pop coughs and clears throat.
Nan: Well I just…
Justin: If you can get over that…
Ken: That’s what’s funny…
Justin: (getting fired up, despite no argument from anyone) It’s not just swearing
Ken: (getting fired up as well) That’s part of his humour, that’s what’s funny about…
Justin: It’s not swearing for the sake of swearing it’s swearing ‘cos that’s something he’d do…
Ken: To me that’s what’s funny about that…
Justin: Cos he’s a notorious…
Nan: Yeah like a book I read.
Ken: And they made a movie, he wrote a book and they made a movie of the book and that’s how he talks.
Justin: Yeah, see it’s one example of…actually he’s the most swearing in the whole show
Ken: Yeah, yeah…
Justin: But it’s only cos um, that’s his character.
Ken: That’s the joke of it.
Justin: Yeah.
Nan: Well I was reading an American book and every…it was a schoolteacher teaching school kids and every line, the kid’d ask him something and he needed the answer of it and he’d be f’in this and f’in that and f’in something else. Every second line of the book. I said yankee books I can’t read. I can’t borrow that. I can’t read American books.
Ken: Don’t blame ya.
Nan: Australian stories I love and English stories and Scotland and Wales and Ireland. I’ve read all them. American (makes a negative sound like ‘bleah’)

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A WORD PAINTS 1/1000 OF A PICTURE

“The glass is full but the metaphor empty.”
– Fancy Dave (c/o www.kilbot.net)

“I thought you should know that my microwave (Hot Stuff) is dead. It was a rather hush-hush affair, me placing her out next to the bin on garbage collection day. I liked to call her Hot stuff. She was mostly used for popcorn and for reheating my flatmate’s poodle’s scrambled eggs, thus she was internally decorated with crispy black corn kernels and jubes of overdone egg dollops. Last week she exploded with thunder and lightning comparable to Cylcone Tracy and I was dreading cleaning her and am almost glad she died, though I feel somewhat guilty for replacing her so quickly with a borrowed substitute from my sister, who I call “High Ho Silver” owing to her aluminium finish. Hot Stuff had expressed only minor aggravation at her cuckolding and is expected to retire gracefully. Meanwhile, Silver has met the poodle’s approval and her popcorn is fit for the Royal Bouquet.I will miss Hot Stuff’s v*rginal white visage greeting me beside the kitchen carpet each afternoon when the pizza pockets ding their way into prime-time applause.”

(Gemma is congratulated on her use of the word ‘cuckolding’ – Ed. Some words were edited due to tetchy email scanners)
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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
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Do you have an inanimate object that is ailing or has passed on? Let the
LapTopping community ease your suffering by emailing Bev:
laptopping@bedroomphilosopher.com

1. Kills little children.
2. Comes in four flavours: strawberry arsenic, vanilla mercury, banana uranium and new cherry.
3. Look just like regular lollies, only poisoned.
4. Flavour lasts the whole day long. and then you die.
5. Not tested on animals, instead tested on back benchers.

LapTopping accepts little responsibility for any nonplussment, disappointment,
rejection or apathy experienced during a HAP HAP HAP HAP HAP HAP HAPPY!(TM)
endorsed activity. Submit your 5 point plan to the chortle portal.
(email Bev at laptopping@bedroomphilosopher.com with 5 things that make you
Happy. Or a top 5 of any kind, except ‘rodeo themed wallpaper.’)

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STORYTIME (Brought to you by “Fox, socks and two smoking barrels” The untold Dr Suess story, available at all good book shops crook shops big shops small shops)

THE BEDROOM PHILOSOPHER’S SONGWRITING WORKSHOP!

In issue #44, I began a song writing workshop. I was working on a song that included lots of pop culture memories from the mid-late eighties and early nineties. I was avoiding things that were ‘too obvious’ and trying to keep songs and movies to a minimum. The response was healthy and ‘whelming’ (that is to say, I was not overwhelmed, nor underwhelmed, just happily ‘whelmed’…hey, there’s something you can say next time someone says ‘how are you’ just wink and say ‘whelmed mate,’)

Anyway, after much consideration, here is a prototype version of the song. It has three verses and a bit of a chorus. I think it’s going to be a pretty laid back folk song, a bit like ‘ballad of the skeletons’ by Allen Ginsberg.

I must just stress one thing:
It’s a ‘draft’ at this stage, and there may even be things ‘repeated’, or pretty sloppy ‘rhyming structures’, etc, or just an overuse of inverted commas.
The main feedback I’m looking for, is if you think there’s something I’ve left out, that really should be in there, or vice versa, if you think there’s something that could be left out (such as vice versa’s…haha)

After watching the Hey Hey It’s Saturday DVD recently, I’m thinking I need to include ‘the girl from curly sue’ and ‘that kid that did that ‘I am an island, I am an issmuss’ poem with Raymond J Bartholemew, as well as ‘everything Ossie Ostrich did or said.’

Enjoy! There are some questions at the end!

THE LOLLY GOBBLE BLISS BOMB SONG

Hats with flaps and popball tricks
Getting collector cards in your weet-bix
Playing double dragon and river raid
Drinking teenage mutant ninja turtle lemonade
Pulling that face when you ate a sour warhead
Getting geggy tah’s whoever you are stuck in your head
Mutumbo tops well he never really should
Have designed a windcheater with tails and a hood
Puma discs tencil polka dot skirts
Those scary grim reaper bowling aids adverts
snak packs, max headroom cans of fruita
Waiting for decathlon to load on my computer
Big boss cigars and crazy critter icecreams
Magnum p.i and mr t from a-team
Fanny packs, bike shorts rolling socks down
Adding two dollars to your dollarmites account
Lucky book club and roller skate stoppers
t-bag, airwolf and welcome back kotter

CHORUS

It’s the lolly gobble bliss bomb
Memories of my mind
Golly my mind wobbles
When I think about the time

the cartoons they’d play of the winning football team
impossible mission and commander keen
those things in twisty packets that you’d put in the oven
games of gang ups that were so hard to govern
That worm tube thing you’d crawl through at the show
Magic gum and sea monkeys that never grow
The got three pockets in my overalls ads
Pop balls troll dolls and yo yo fads,
Those jumping balls with the ring around it
Bridge to teribithia left everyone confounded
Stable tables pound puppies vice versa lollies
The country practice scriptwriters killing off molly
Green jelly rocking up the three little pigs
No one nicked your stix chips cos they were sh*t
Mouse trap, widget, indecent obsession
pauly shore movie watching sessions
The he-man figure with the little gun caps
Ruffles-rollups and alex papps
Garbage pail kids and glow worm toys
Larry and balky and the dance of joy
Adding mr matey for a bubble bath
Michael tunn, teddy ruxpin and jennie garth
Ghostbuster slime and itty bitty bins
Ovalteenies and skateboards with wings
The never ending story horse sinking in the mud
Choose your own adventure and books about grug

CHORUS

Trax brand shoes and bananarama
Strawberry shortcake and molly’s melodrama
Life education vans teaching social knowledge
That kid that went that’s not how you make porridge
Puff paint cabbage patch milo and otis
Halley’s comet hype but no-one really noticed
Mid riff tops that girls tied around the waist
Masseur sandles and ace of base
Gobbledock, matthew krok the it’s a knockout hooter
A line of merchandise from the brand poo-shooter
Animalia and tasty toobs
Samantha fox’s commodore 64 (a word you can make on a calculator)
High speed dubbing and the crocodile mile
Bigfoot pizzas and gomer pile
roller shoes and undercuts being cool
snap bands getting banned in high school
the dead eyes opened by severed heads
watching a nude family playing Frisbee in sex ed
only dags need fags and yucky yucky p*o
he-man and she-ra and ravishing rick rude
the fitness beep test in p.e.
Tokyo ghetto p*ssy
The mouse trap game that everybody wanted
Along with a sodastream and all the bits to voltron
the alf Frisbee with whistles that I had
not sure if anybody else remembers that
but it’s good to bring it up, all the same
no problem, as alf would say

CHORUS

1 – Are there enough typical ‘girl’ things? If not, can you suggest some more. Is fanny packs an American term (b*m bags?)
2 – Are mutumbo tops too obscure? Does anyone else remember those?
3 – Is the chorus okay? Not too sappy or lame? I figured cos the verse’s are such an onslaught, you’d want something pretty simple and digestible in the chorus, and how digestible were bliss bombs?

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!
To be added to this Ezine check out www.bedroomphilosopher.com and go to the LapTopping page. You will be asked for your name, email, and the last time you cried.

Last time someone cried: Elise – “In paris, curled in the foetal position, listening to ‘Come on eileen.’”

Back issues of LapTopping can be witnessed at www.bedroomphilosopher.com
To be removed from this Ezine reply with the subject line “Clarity starts at home”

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**Don’t forget to vote for ‘I’m So Post Modern’ In the Hottest 100! Voting closes January 20. Thankyou!**

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The Gandolf impersonation is transmitted is for the use of the intended
recipient only and may contain confidential and/or legally privileged
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barmat’s or mother’s obtuse woof, or faking of any traction in whiffwhiff
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What about stirrup pants and body suits? They looked best with crimped hair & bubble fringe, tied up in a scrunchy. Perfect outfit for playing with your My Little Pony, reading your Sweet Valley High, or watching Family Ties. You would probably have to get changed into your track ‘n’ fields (with a yellow stripe) before bashing the totem tennis. Mum would make you do your homework (copy things out of the World Book encyclopedia) before you were allowed to make a mix tape for your best friend – made in return for your half of the ‘friends forever’ necklace. Isn’t it great being a girl?

well, i think you are all mad.
and my head wants to explode.
can i stay too?
i love you all, so much, your head would want to explode to if you knew how much.
my head hurts.
i think i think about thinking too much…
“i think i think i think i thnk”
yay.
toodles noodles
sparticus the bridge.

Fanny pack is exceedingly American. Bum bags all the way. And also thank you for prolonging my life by making me really laugh. No joining a morning laughter club in India for me, I’ve got the Bedroom Philosopher. There are beautiful joyous bubbles of life coming out of this website and I love it.

Tazzie = best place ever
jeez, u should hear all these mainlanders
(sorry for generalising)
“ooo, it was too cold”
“it rained all the time”
“we had to wear jumpers in SUMMER”
really i should tell them to shut their whiny, petulant mouths, except i hate causing a ruckuss
speaking of marrying people
i would love to marry Dale Begg-Smith
but unfortunately, this is illegal at this point in time